Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Last week provided a too perfect for fiction chance to compare the two sides in the current conflict. While the organisers of the March for [ ] thrashed about desperatly trying to find a way to protest against barking without mentioning dogs, elsewhere in London there was no such equivocation. At the Old Bailey, prosecuters recounted how Muslims talked about trying to poison football fans and blow up holidaying families. Listening to desperate flip-flopping on the one hand, and joyous blood lust on the other, it was hard not to let one thought dominate all others: we could lose this thing.

Robert Ferrigno has been thinking along the same lines. His new novel 'Prayers for the Assasin' is set in an Islamic States of America in 2042. How and why the US collapsed is revealed over the course of the book. Yep, it's that cliche of the future history genre, the 'dark secret that must be hidden', but the main interest is not the hunt for the secret - it's obvious from almost the first page - so much as the brilliant description of an Islamic America. Ferrigno has clearly studied Islam in depth, and so he describes not only what an Islamic America could be like, so much as what it very probably would be like.

Of course, this book has its flaws. Sometimes the story seems to teeter on the edge of becoming a generic chase thriller. Similarly, one of the bad guys is a cliched smoothie sociopath, a Hannibal Al-Lector. The biggest problem however - as with much else in life - is PC, albeit of the gender rather than racial sort. The demands of the publishing world for the proverbial 'strong, female characters' means that Ferrigno is forced to introduce an absurd distinction in his Islamic society between fundementalists and supposed 'moderns', with 'modern' women free to, well, carry on as normal. In so far as Islam is anything but normal in its treatment of women, this undercuts the whole vision, but at least it allows the deeply annoying female lead to indulge in enough acts of derring-do to satisfy the editors while Ferrigno manages to slip in enough hints of how fundementalist women are treated to get the message out. Indeed, one of the most chilling scenes in the whole book is when a thuggish religious policeman is inspecting a fundementalist female-only cyber cafe.

Ultimatly, what gives this work its power is that Ferrigno is no mere 'Nuke Mecca' ranter. On the contary, Ferrigno bends over backwards to be fair to Islam, for example the first of only two references to Islam's weird hatred of Man's Best Friend is where the protagonist has to step round 'dog product' while walking through a dhimmi area. Equally, while the word 'dhimmitude' never appears in the text, Ferrigno is unsparing in his description of the reality of the state-not-to-be-named. That's the point, of course. Ferrigno is content simply to let details speak for themselves - the essential lunacy of Islam needs no embellishment (which is why the Al-Beeb will never refer either to dhimmitude or the hatred of dogs).

What really worries Ferrigno is summed in his acknowledgements when he quotes Simone de Beauvoir on the atheistic implications of her work 'One can abolish water, but one cannot abolish thirst'. It's not just metaphysics, Ferrigno is alive to the way Islam provides a sense of community - one of the most memorable moments in the book is the description of the protagonists caught up in the rush to morning prayer, with all manner of people moving as one to the mosques. It's this sense of belonging, of identity, that explains a least as much of the lure of Islamolunacy as the mystical nonsense.

Above all else, Islam offers answers. Admittedly, rubbish answers, but this is ground deserted by most of the West's self-proclaimed so-fist-ikates, the people who pride themselves on their ability to 'raise questions', 'challenge orthodoxies' and similiar idiocies. Maybe these people's constant ranting about 'fascists' arises from a haunting guilt that all this just isn't good enough. We know what they don't believe in, but what do they actually stand for ?

In this respect, the March for [ ] was the reification of everything that's wrong in mainstream Western Culture. Sure, some may object to Ferrigno's implicit belief that a secular, post-modern West can not win against Islam, but what do they offer ? Simply yapping about 'freedom' isn't enough. Even Ayn Rand recognised the essentially vacuous nature of much Libertarianism - Objectivism was her attempt to produce a rational basis for this sphere of ideology. Few since has faced up the challenge. If our intellectual classes are going to spend their time whining about fascists and sneering at tradition, then the onus is on them to come up with a real 'ideology of freedom'. That's not going to be easy in a country where even nominally right-wing MPs vote for Walking Licences, but at least in Robert Ferrigno we now have an author not afraid to give us a glimpse of the price of failure, and for that we should all be suitably grateful.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Like many people, I was shocked by the news that one and a half million council workers were going on strike today. Chiefly, I was shocked by the revelation that we have one and a half million smoking cessation officers, diversity coordinators and sundry other bottom inspectors.

Strangely, civilisation has managed to survive a day without their input (and without millions suddenly sparking up). Some would say this raises the question of whether the nation needs so many outreach officers. Not at the BBC though. Jeremy Vine featured as its two examples of striking workers, a teaching assistant and a fingerprint technician. Yep, that is exactly representative of the average council worker. Hey, with 1.5 million sucking hard on the public teat, every cop in the country could have his own technician and every teacher their own assistant and we still couldn’t account for half of them.

In so far as they have an actual argument as to why their lifestyle should be subsidised by people with real jobs, it’s that they’re being discriminated against. Don’t laugh – they claim they should be allowed to retire early because people like cops are allowed to. A-huh. So pen pushers who get their paycheque from Her Majesty’s Government should be given privileges denied folks who push pens for an insurance company because policing is a dangerous and violent job. Of course.

The other argument deployed is that Enron-style pensions are written into their contract and employers can’t arbitrarily change the terms of the employment contract, an argument which surely proves beyond all reasonable doubt that these people exist in a world of their own. In the private sector employers screw around with contracts all the time. They also fire people, make massive redundancies and randomly redeploy people around the country. All the government wants to do is make the Turkey Army work to the same age as everyone else. There is no better explanation of why our public services are so decisively screwed than the sight of red-faced bloaters screeching their outrage at the fact they’re being treated as though they worked in the real world.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Surprisingly, despite the organisers’ strategy of trying to ban most of the people who would turn up, the ‘March for Free Expression’ was a flop. Apparently, the public were not inspired by a demonstration for free expression where you couldn’t actually express yourself freely.

It does raise an interesting philosophical question though: is it ironic, or just stupid, that a guy so obsessed with insensitive language calls his opponents 'fascists' ? See, here’s the thing: we’re talking about people who think you should be killed for publishing stuff they disagree with, and the fascists are the people who oppose them ? How does that work ?

As if calling a large chunk of potential supporters 'fascists' wasn’t enough, the next trick was to claim a moral equivalence between the Cartoon Jihad and the folks from Christian Voice protesting outside performances of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Huh ? So it was a demonstration against the right of people to demonstrate ? And people say Liberals haven’t got a well worked out philosophy.

Just for any members of the hard-of-thinking out there, I’ll spell it out: when Christain Voice demonstrates against performances of JStO, they’re not opposing free speech, they’re exercising it. You have the right to freedom of expression, but so do your opponents. That’s why it’s called the right to free speech, not the right to be universally applauded.

Of course, this painful attempt to draw equivalence between some old folks with placards and the July 7 bombers exposes perfectly the central flaw in the whole concept of the march. Free expression isn’t threatened by climate change, big business, or any of the Left’s other usual suspects, least of all by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and its cunning plan to abolish free speech by supporting it, but the Left is still stuck in the paradigms of student politics.

The March for Free Expression isn’t proof that the Left has finally woken up to the danger, it’s the complete opposite. Even with maniacs wandering round with placards calling for the beheading of opponents, the Left can't even bring itself to name the enemy. After all, someone may mistake them for right-wingers. Hence the desire to square the circle, to find a proverbial ‘Third Way’ or the equally elusive ‘moderate Muslims’.

If it achieved nothing else, at least the March for Free Expression has proved the essential truth of the time honoured advice from the Right to the Left: Liberals, shut the hell up, we’ll save civilisation.

Just so you know were we are today with Blair's pledge that NuLab would be purer than pure, the first casaulty of the scandal over secret loans to Labour turns out to be a businessman not a politician. Of course.

This is the point Conservatives keep making. Liberals try and justify their regulatory meglomania by claiming that business would run rampant without the dead hand of government keeping them under control, but cases like this prove the complete opposite. If nothing else, Blair has shown there are almost no limits to what a government can get away with, providing only that they can fool enough folks to get a majority every now and again. Things were a little different for Capita - their government contracts might be like having a money tree, but being known as the folks who have to bribe the government to get work would be fatal for seeking private sector contracts. That's why Aldridge has gone while so many Labour hacks remain. For all that Liberals like to claim massive regulation provides 'public accountability', the market provides a far faster and more ruthless punishment for misconduct than the sleazy cesspit of politics ever can.

Back when Liberals were trying to drown out anyone asking just who it was who had killed Mary Ann Leneghan, they were insisting that the real issue was just how so many obviously dangerous members of the undead community were on the streets despite prior convictions for serious offences. I'm guessing the L3 must think they've got away with it, because normal service has been resumed in our courts.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Just how far down the U-bend has the BBC gone ? Consider this topic on (Don't) Have Your Say: 'Should Religious Converts Be Punished?'

Gosh, is murdering converts alright or not ? We may never know!

Anyway, didn't religion used to be the opium of the masses ? I guess Marx had his chance to destroy the West, now it's Islams's turn. Call it a wild shot in the dark, but I'm thinking that if America suddenly suffers another rash of shark attacks, the BBC will run a DHYS thread on whether eating people is wrong.

Meanwhile, the BBC - ever on the alert for those crazy 'extremists' - has chosen to make this a 'fully moderated' topic, thereby offering further clues as to what definition of extreme the BBC is employing. Consider, for example, that all of the following are A-OK with the BBC:

Afghanistan is a sovereign country. How about everybody stops commenting on THEIR buisiness? Laws are laws. Afghanistan has an elected government. Or are we only happy when the results from elected governments are "correct"? Mind you own buisiness.

Chris Irvine

Apparently, Liberals really do inhabit a different universe to the rest of us, at least to judge by their interpretation of the concept of 'universal' human rights.

if this man is killed, and america continues to fund afgahnistan, then america, not islam or the afgahis, are only to blame. america turns a blind eye on nations like this, so long as they fit within america's agendas. wake up gwb, and start practicing what you preach.

ralph kimball, augusta, ga, United States

Yep, Islam is a barbaric ideology, therefore the only answer is to turn the country over to hard-line Islamopaths. It's all so obvious...

This issue is not so much about religious freedom or lack thereof, rather of the East's rejection of all things western of which Christianity is the foremost symbol. The west has done nothing to ingratiate itself with the East thereby staunchly pre-disposing them to loathe the west. Claiming that an individual must die for a personal choice is undeniably irrational but is the East trying to make an anti-west statement? One wonders. Or at least one should.

Sakshi Hazuria, Salt Lake City, USA

Doncha'just love it when you see these people slagging off the West from the well-known African state of Utah ? Apparently, the West is hell, but not in the sense of somewhere you wouldn't want to live.

But wait, we can't have a proper DHYS thread on the Religion of Peace without you-know-who, where can he be ?

Although this is a ridiculous thing to happen and totally unIslamic (there is no compulsion in religion), aren't we in the West the ones who brought 'freedom and democracy' to Afghanistan after invading it? So who are we to criticise the laws of that 'free and democratic' nation? This sort of event just gives another excuse for all the Islamophobes and xenophobes to crawl out of the woodwork and vent their nasty prejudices against Muslims and Islam in general.

Bilal Patel, London, UK

Phew! The end of the world has been averted, Bilal is back, and with another excellent point. Islamopaths murdering people who escape from the death cult is wrong because it strengthens the case for people who oppose the Religion of Peace. Who says it's a religion of amoral sociopaths ?

I've been out of the loop for the last couple of days, so I'm trying to catch up on recent events. As I understand it, a completely random group of people have been charged with plotting acts of terrorism to no particular end, at least that's the impression I get from reports like this from the BBC.

C'mon, is there anyone in the known universe who's still buying this ? As Mark Steyn points out, the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks and the July 7 attacks were both called Mohammed - who'd have thunk it ?

Normally, BBC bias is plenty annoying. After all, we're talking about a body that jelously defends its legal right to shake down the public for filthy lucre, even while spending its time slandering a large chunk of the country. Still, when the BBC is producing poorly-written dramas featuring moustache-twirling Conservatives throwing poor people into furnaces so they can sell arms to CIA-backed dictators in the former USSR, there is a lingering fear that some people might actually believe this. I'm not so sure that even the BBC can sell people on the idea that it's just a coincidence that disproportionate numbers of Islamically-inclined folks keep getting caught up in cases like this. Au contrair, the BBC's constant attempts to sell us all on the idea that it's all a huge coincidence may just be the Liberal media's own Stalingrad.

Talking of Liberals blaming the victim, check out the headline here: 'Livingstone in fresh Jewish controversy'. Ah yes, one of the chief apologists for open borders immigration (and the subsequent open welfare wallets, of course) unleashes his inner taxi driver on two successful businessmen, who - by an amazing coincidence - happen to be Jewish, and that's a 'Jewish controversy'. Really ? Is that how far down the sewer the modern Left has gone, that they can't even concieve of any non-hook nosed person being appalled by this lowlife's anti-Semitic rantings ? Never mind the blatant attempt to cast this as another case of those whiny kikes bitching again, what about the implication that the rest of us are somehow OK with climbing into the Left's cess pit of Jew hating lunacy ?

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

OK, now we are definitely aproaching the end times, when all the world's stupidities will coagulate into one massive singularity of idiocy. Liberals keep coming up with bizzaro world explanations for why Conservatives are exactly like Nazis, but then we find out that it's the L3 that seem to be swapping talking points with the jackbooted untermensch. Both sets of collectivist trash seem to agree that Mary Ann Leneghan was asking for it. Try this comment:

As Richard Latham QC, prosecuting, admitted: “Mary-Ann (and her friend) were not without their problems. Mary-Ann was bunking off school, neither had a job. They were certainly not the sort of girls who would have been tucked up at home at 10 o’clock at night."

Let's see that one again:

As Richard Latham QC, prosecuting...

Yep. That does say 'prosecuting'. Maybe the government's trying to cut down on the Legal Aid bill by having one guy represent both sides ?

Whazzat ?

Mr Liberal would like to point out that calling the vics scum could all be a cunning ploy by the prosecution. OK, but was it a cunning ploy to also take at face value the killers' claim that Mary Ann had taken part in a drugs heist ? Seems to me that only two people know the truth of that, one a murderer and one who's not available to testify. Since when have self-confessed drug-dealing killers been regarded as credible witnesses ?

Naturally enough, these attempts to blacken the name of the victims of extreme sexual violence have raised the hackles of the femiloon community. And when I say 'raised the hackles of', I mean in the sense of 'been completely ignored by'. Apparently, it is OK to talk about the past history of rape victims, but only when it's strictly relevant to the needs of Liberalism.

The femiloons aren't the only one suffering Sudden Backflip Syndrome. Before the Crown decided criticising the victims of ethnic violence was a perfectly valid tactic, they thought it was grounds for prosecution. Nick Griffin's own trial blog records the Crown's weird obsession with his comments on Stephen Lawrence (here, for example). Think that one through: if 'Richard Latham QC, prosecuting' had come out with similar comments about Stephen Lawrence, he might have ended up in the dock. Gosh, I guess there must be some kind of difference between Mary Ann Leneghan and Stephen Lawrence. What can it be ?

By the way, just so you know, St Stephen of Lawrence was killed at around 10:30 PM, and I bet there's more chance of our next PM being a duck called 'Ralphie' than there is of any Liberal ever having sneered about him not being tucked up after 10 PM.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Say what you like about Liberals, but they're admirably hard-headed about sacrificing even their most committed brethren once they've become a liability to the Liberal cause. Look at the way events in Reading have suddenly given Liberals in the judicial system that 'pushed under the bus' feeling. Back when the Probation Service was merely causing the deaths of innocents, the Left was foursquare behind them, but now times have changed. Suddenly, even the BBC is reporting on their impressive record of scalps. What's gone right ?

Call me cynical, but whenever I hear Liberals suddenly tell the truth, I find myself asking this: what are they trying to hide. Well, take a look at this report here, or more specifically one section of it:

They found Mary-Ann and her friend drinking wine and sitting in a car belonging to a female friend called Shazia Ishaq.

"Just the girls we've been looking for," said Thomas.

Mary-Ann and her friend were dragged out of the car by the hair and bundled into the boot of the gang's car, which was already full with six men inside.

Shazia only escaped by lying about being pregnant.

Yep, everything we've heard about these charmers tells me that they're the just the sort of folks to be strong pro-lifers.

But wait... I've just had an e-mail from a Mr Sane, he'd like to point out this post.

Ah huh.

Yes, Mr Liberal, it is technically true that none of the guilty parties have published a pamphlet called 'Why I Like Raping & Murdering Infidel Women', but the evidence for an Islamic connection is at least as compelling as 99% of the incidents the MSM cheerfully call 'racially-motivated' - but only if the scumbag in question is native British.

Ah yes, that would be the thing.

For all their supposed obsession with context and nuance, when it comes to cases like this, Liberals bend over backwards to present every case like this as sui generis. It's a series of totally unique events that - amazingly - keep happening. Femiloons who normally spend their days claiming that the design of cornflake packages oppresses women, find absolutely nothing worthy of comment in a culture that produces gang rapists by the dozen. Equality freaks see no problem in a serious of violent outbreaks along ethnic lines. And the police ? They're tied up looking for offensive golliwogs.

Maybe there are Liberals in the justice system unhappy at being set up for the political equivalent of human sacrifice to the gods of multiculturalism. Considering the price paid by folks like Mary-Ann Leneghan, I think they got off lightly.

It's an A-List cage fight! Oliver Kamm has written an article for the Times basically lamenting that they let anyone in the Blogosphere these days. Blog evangelist Jackie D has struck back by claiming that even if 99% of us are idiots, this technology allows us to combine our stupidity and create a sort of virtual intelligence.

Well, whatever. What chiefly annoyed me was Kamm resurrecting an old charge against the Blogosphere, namely that bloggers are essentially parasitic on the MSM. Sure enough, but isn't there an element of pots & kettles here ? Consider the constant yelping during the last Gulf War that the military weren't fast enough to supply the MSM with up to the minute reports on what every unit was doing. So this is what 150 years of technological advances have done for reporting, from William Howard Russell witnessing the Charge of the Light Brigade, to a barrel load of whiny brats demanding that soldiers drop stories in their lap. Say what you like about bloggers, but at least we don't storm into newspaper officers 30 minutes before deadline and demand the staff open up their archives for us.

The bottom line is that the MSM just doesn't do that much original reporting anyway, not once you factor out the rewritten PR garbage, the space given over to activist whiners and the constant pillaging of the cuttings file. The Martians could land in Sheffield and the MSM wouldn't notice until they issued a press release.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

I don't know if it's just me, or if other Right-wing bloggers get e-mails every fortnight or so from enraged L3. The usual charge is that I'm unfairly stereotyping the Left when ,in fact, the modern Left includes a whole kaleidoscope of different views. Well, sure. chihuahuas are different from rottweillers, but no one objects to the word 'dog'. All this talk about the infinite varieties of Liberalism, just as much as the absurd attempts by Liberals to rebrand themselves as 'progressives' or 'moderates', is just a slippery way to distance themselves from the collectivist thuggery that is the real distinguishing mark of Liberalism.

The Liberal commitment to freedom turns out to be a commitment to allow people to do whatever they agree with. For proof of what Liberals really believe, consider the Food Wars.

We're told that massive government regulation of the food supply is justified by the health dangers of eating the wrong food. Really ? Don't plenty of things have negative health consequences ? How about promiscuous anal sex ? How come Libs don't want to force the manager of the Blue Oyster Bar to put up warning signs ? But no, Liberals spent years claiming they wanted government out of the bedroom - they never mentioned they wanted it to go downstairs and regroup in the fridge.

So, right from the off, there's a basic absurdity there, but it gets deeper. Consider the latest developments. Here's the Treason Party's spokesman on Tesco's excellent decision to tell the Health Nazis to shove it:

They have huge influence on our culture and what we eat. It is irresponsible for such a company to go it alone when it comes to public health.

The Health Nazis wanted to mau-mau the big supermarkets into following their loony agenda, but now Tesco has decided to call their bluff. Going it alone ? If that's true then Tesco's sales will plunge and Webb has nothing to worry about. But I'm guessing things will go the other way, and so apparently is Webb, hence the absurd whining about Tesco being 'as powerful as the government'. Yes, indeed, it's all a dark conspiracy.

What it's all about is what it's always about. Liberals claim that we are in the grip of a national health crisis caused by eating the wrong food, and the only answer is massive government regulation. Then again, this is what they say about the environment as well. Also, education, business and everything else, except terrorism. Government power can turn Johnny Vegas into Arnold Schwarzenegger, but national defense is outside their competence.

What's most striking about this case though is the outright murder of the English language. Consider this:

Its attitude to competition and food labeling is symptomatic of an arrogance on the part of big supermarkets.

Let's leave aside the absurdity of an unabashed advocate of massive state power claiming to worry about 'competition', and just consider the sheer chutzpah of claiming that a business is arrogant for refusing to accede to the demands of a group of unrepresentative fanatics. Tesco are, quite literarily, minding their own business. It's fascist creeps like Webb who want to impose their agenda on the public.

In no country with a functional right-wing party would Liberals be able to get away with this kind of rhetoric. Unfortunately, it's not even clear that there's anyone left in Opus Dave that can see the absurdity of the charge. This is why the argument that rightists should support the Conservative Party as being the least-worst credible government falls down. It's not just about which specific laws are passed, it's about culture too. Right now, Liberals have waged the war so effectively that a company which seeks no more than to give the public what they want can be denounced as 'arrogant'. Whatever trivial legislative changes a Cameron government may make, without a determination to wage the Culture War, Liberalism will continue to make inroads into British culture.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Liberals often deny chages that the media lies by omission. No, the fact that seemingly newsworthy stories that happen to be unhelpful to the Left sometimes disappear without a trace is simply because the selection of which stories to feature is - that phrase again - 'very complex' so stories that would be headline news one day, might not feature the next.

Uh OK. But I'm betting there are some stories that would be headline news anytime. How about the abduction and subsequent murder of a teenage girl ? And how about if one of the assailants was a former social worker, cleared to foster kids ? Still not enough ? OK, how about if they carved her body up and served it up to customers in their takeaway ?

STOP THE PRESSES!

This is the type of story you'd expect the MSM to go to Defcon One for, but no - talking dogs get more coverage. Why might that be ? Guess!

Yes, indeed, Mr Liberal, her tenure was not one of unparalled achievement, but to repeat the point I made originally, if this happened in any other context and in any other industry, the media would be all over it. The firing of an editor (very) shortly after the publication of a controversial article about Islam certainly comes under the aegis of the media's favourite phrase 'the appearance of impropriety', all the more so when there appears to be a fatwa against mentioning these two incidents in the same article. To use another of these favourite phrases: just what is it they’ve got to hide ?

Monday, March 13, 2006

As part of it's committment to public service broadcasting, the BBC offers us an answer to the age old riddle: what's the difference between 'campaigners' and 'lobbyists' ? Answer: the side of the issue they're on.

Both words are used in their coverage of the 10th anniversary of Dunblane (Boris Johnson, please call your office!), but you can't help noticing that activists on only one side of the debate are labelled 'campaigners', i.e. concerned citizens working for a better world, while folk on the other are referred to as a 'lobby', no doubt plotting and planning in smoke-filled rooms.

Just about the only people who talk about the 'gun lobby' are members of the hoplophobic loon lobby. Take, for example, this effusion from the Cindy Sheehan of Scotland:

[Mick North] said the pro-gun lobby claimed it was their right to carry on a sport responsibly, but the right to bring up his daughter had been taken away from him.

That's it, that's the closest we get to any comment from pro-freedom campaigners, a notorious hate speaker telling us what his opponents might say.

Well, I guess it cuts down on the phone bill if one interviewee can supply both sides of the argument. But seriously: What. The. Hell! The BBC often like to caricature bias spotters as political anoraks, sitting there with their stopwatches, making sure both sides get equal time. Well, there's no question of equal time here, they just don't cover one side at all.

This is the central point about BBC bias. No one - strawman-loving BBC apologists to the contrary - seriously believes that BBC staff all meet up of a morning and decide how they're going to spin today's news. Nope - it's worse than that. They just don't think there are any other perspectives in the first place. It wouldn't occur to them that there are alternative worldviews to the rantings of the hoplophobes, anymore than they'd think of the bigoted rantings of 'Cindy' North as anything other than common sense.

No doubt there's a willing audience for this kind of easy pandering to prejudice, but how exactly does it count as public service broadcasting ?

Just before I get on to my main small area of questioning, Mr Singh asked you about your organisation and you said you were set up after Dunblane but I am still not clear in my mind—and I suspect Mr Singh and others feel the same—exactly who you are. We know who the RSPCA are, the NFU and we know who their members are. How many members do you have?(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) We were set up after Dunblane in July 1996 as a voluntary organisation with an executive committee of seven. We had families of people from the Hungerford tragedy as well as academics and lawyers.

Mr Fabricant: How many members do you have now?

(Professor Taylor) I am interested in the reason for the question.

Mr Fabricant

283. I do not have to give a reason for a question, I want to know how many members you have. Do you know how many members you have?(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Can I just explain a bit of the background to the organisation? We set up with an executive committee of seven, we decided not to have a public membership of this organisation, and on the advice of some Canadian colleagues who had set up a similar organisation and found it infiltrated by shooters and had to stop and restart again with a very, very small group, we decided to remain as a very small group, and that is what we are still.

Mr Winnick

284. Financed by whom?(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) We started off by being financed by a trust which came to us after Dunblane with an unsolicited donation, and that helped us over the course of our major campaigning until the legislation took place. Since then, we are just operating on a voluntary basis, occasionally we have small donations by trusts but we are a very small group.

Mr Fabricant

285. Can you tell us which trust?(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) No. It was asked that the donation should remain anonymous. It is a charitable organisation.

So there you have it. Consider for a moment the thought process the BBC must have used to decide that a country GP who likes shooting clays is part of the 'gun lobby', but a group which couldn't fill a minibus and won't come clean about who's backing them are 'campaigners'.

I guess there is no honour amongst thieves after all. Liberals profess to be shocked – shocked! – that Sir Ian Blair taped phone calls with a government minister. Personally, if I had to deal with a Nu Lab minister, I’d want the whole thing recorded, independent witnesses present and a marksman on a nearby rooftop. But that’s my own VRWC self – of all the people in Britain, Blair is the one least qualified to start claiming he fears persecution by the State whose powers he worked so hard to increase.

Of course, that goes both ways. Back in the 1990s, the MSM were obsessed with the hypocrisy of Tories who signed up to the whole ‘Back to Basics’ thing, even while cheating on their wives. Now, our CCTV-obsessed Liberal Establishment - favourite mantra: ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’ - has decided that, actually, privacy is kind of important after all, and the MSM are eating it up with a shovel.

Typically, it’s the BBC that’s pushing hardest on the line that what Blair did was an outrage. Yes, the Beeb is vigorously opposed to this kind of underhand behaviour, as the results of a google.co.uk search on bbc+secret+recording+police+reporter reveals. Of course, the two cases aren’t exactly the same. After all, one involves a Liberal activist masquerading as a police officer, while the other involves a BBC reporter.

All the MSM’s fatwa on Blair proves is that you know who your friends are when you can longer serve the Liberal agenda. Sir Ian was the very definition of a useful idiot back when the L3 needed an insider to carry out their anti-police agenda, but that was before July 7. Until that day, the L3 could get away with sneering at anyone who suggested we were at war. Afterwards, denying the existence of the threat got a little tougher, right up until July 22 and the Martyrdom of St Jean.

Indeed, the Yin of the demonisation of Sir Ian is matched by the Yang of the Liberals near-deification of a fraudster. Say, didn’t the Left used to be against tax evasion ? Certainly, you’ll never see the MSM pick up on any of these questions. Speaking personally, I’m with this guy. Forget the legal arguments, morally St Jean was in exactly the same position as a conman who talks his way into a pensioner's house then breaks his leg slipping on the kitchen floor – if he hadn’t defrauded his way into this country, he’d still be alive.

It was the Liberals’ own Via Dolorossa, those two weeks spent pretending to support Britain, but at last they were free to claim that the real threat was from the people fighting to defend our civilisation. Never mind that the people running the operation were the very definition of the Nu Police, there were 52 bodies to buried, and so the bombers were rebranded as ‘misguided criminals’, while Liberals professed to be terrified that SO19 would suddenly jump out of the bushes and shoot them.

Never mind too that the L3 had not a single worthwhile comment to make on this operation. In so far as no one was arguing in favour of shooting the wrong people – no matter how vigorously the Liberal media may maintain otherwise – the sole matter for debate was the tactics the police should use when faced with a suicide bomber. As ever when faced with difficult questions, the Liberal response was to evade it with a serious of teenage girl whines about insensitivity and the like.

This isn’t a hard scenario to visualise: police believe an Islamic terrorist has entered a confined space carrying a bomb, how should they prevent him detonating it ?

….

Nope, the Left are busy chasing down allegations that Sir Ian fiddled the books for the CID coffee fund in 1982. Liberals are against bad stuff, that's all you need to know.

I guess the L3 were right, the Danish cartoons were simply a mindless act of provocation, with no wider point to make about the coverage of Islam. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to read articles like this.

Oops.

Mind you, the Telegraph admitting that the Filth have ordered them to take an article down practically counts as heroism compared to the normal standards of our fearless media. Certainly, the rest of the MSM are hardly rallying to their cause - something to be borne in mind next time you hear some editor banging on about how legal challenges to their right to report on gay goalkeepers or bonking batsmen is a terrifying threat to British democracy.

Need it be said that Liberty and the rest of the hand-wringers are AWOL (but don't call them Left-wing) ? So this is what it means to be on the far Right: believing that newspapers should be free to publish and be damned. I guess we'll have to win the Culture War to see what the Telegraph would have said, until then here's a completely randomarticle for your reading pleasure.

UPDATE:

The plot thickens! Via Laban, who's been on this from the start, there comes a suggestion that the Telegraph bungled the name of one of the books cited in the article. Given that the sort of thing is happening a lot since the Telegraph took a chainsaw to their subediting personnel, that's just about believable but we're still faced with a lot of unanswered questions. Why was the whole article taken down ? Why does it remain down, rather than producing a corrected article with an addendum (surely the normal response to this kind of thing) ? Equally, the tone of the offended party's letter suggests that legal action is unlikely. More to the point, what's with the 1984 style vapourisation ? We still have no official word from the Telegraph on why the article has gone. Ditto, no other news outlet has referred to these events.

The bottom line is that for years jounalists have been preaching about the public's right to know. Phrases like transparency and accountability have been tossed around, together with not so subtle innuendos that any entity that fails to immediatly submit to the jounalistic equivalent of a prostate exam must have something to hide. Well, now, the MSM does have a record of censorship in the coverage of Islam, an article critical of Islam has disappeared down the memory hole, there is a news blackout over what's actually happened - do they have something to hide ?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

On the subject of Soviet era jokes, I recall the saying that both the US and the USSR had freedom of speech, but only America had freedom after the speech. I'm not sure how many modern Liberals would get it. Not too many to judge by the fact that they can come out with stuff like this with a straight face:

If a newspaper through its columnist is willing to express a controversial opinion, its editor should surely be willing and available to be held to account for it.

The Jowell farce continues - the latest iteration is Jowell explaining that her husband didn't own a particular set of shares, he merely owned the company that owned the shares. See ? That makes all the difference.

All of this reminds me of the old joke about Brezhnev becoming General Secretary of the USSR. He invites his mother up to Moscow and shows her his swanky appartment, big car, domestic staff and all other trappings of office, then she says to him 'Well, you've done very well for yourself, Leonid, but aren't you worried what will happen if the Communists take over ?'

Given the precious one’s penchant for exhuming the dead and setting up fatuous policy groups, this was sort of inevitable. Not that Heseltine’s unqualified though:

Lord Heseltine, who led the regeneration of Liverpool after the 1981 Toxteth riots...

It’s lucky we have the BBC to tell us these things. Without them, how would we know Liverpool has been regenerated ? Can you imagine what Wayne Rooney would be like if it hadn’t been ?

For what it’s worth, Heseltine’s chosen method of regenerating Liverpool was the International Garden Festival. Really. This settled once and for all the difficult question of whether millions of pounds of public money could succeed in transforming derelict land into Japanese pavilions and the like. Call me a cynic, but I’m thinking that whatever's happened or hasn’t happened on Merseyside since then, bonsai trees are unlikely to have played a significant role in it.

The former environment secretary said: "Instead of areas which a large number of people try to get out of because the schools aren't good enough, because the housing isn't good enough, because the dereliction is off putting, you have to make them competitive with those leafy suburbs to which people go."

Now isn’t this a revealing insight into what Blue Labour really believe ? Sure, there’s the Thatcherite rhetoric about ‘competitiveness’, but what does it actually mean ? Let's, for the sake of argument, accept that the inner cities are awful because of a lack of high-quality horticulture. Either they have nice gardens or they don’t. In what sense are they competing with anyone ? The logic – and I use that term loosely – of Heseltine’s position is that you could presumably achieve the same effect by either building more gardens in the cities or by soaking the suburbs in Agent Orange. Or, to put it another way, forget all the pseudomarket jargon, this is just the same old obsession with supposed ‘equality’ that has hobbled social policy for years.

Still, it marks a new low even for these people to be adopting the childish Liberal habit of sneering at ‘leafy suburbs’. Really, what do they propose ? Maybe they could hire a few dumper trucks and set up a bussing programme to help counteract the ‘leaf gap’ ? Seriously, what’s objectionable is not only the fact the Tories have bought into the stupid rhectoric, but also the underlying ideas. Take schools - to listen to the L3 you could almost imagine literacy rates in schools in the inner cities were so bad because they pesky suburbanites were using up all the education so they had nothing left over to teach with.

But there’s something more profoundly wrong about Blue Labour’s approach. Consider the sheer weirdness of the whole thing, banner headlines about the fact that an English guy has gone from one part of England to another. There’s something deeply wrong when Cameron seems to think he’s David Livingstone just because he’s gone north of Watford. Does Cameron really expect to be taken seriously ‘oop North’ when he makes it so blindingly obvious that he consider Northerners as ‘the Other’.

Where are the Northern Conservatives ? Hell, I’ll even give Cameron a name: Esther McVey. Successful GMTV presenter, now a Conservative candidate in an eminently winnable seat on Merseyside. But no – Cameron travels up with his Metropolitan acolytes, talks to a bunch of Metropolitan journalists, then goes back to London.

Now, some may point out that the lovely Esther is not standing in an inner city hellhole. Well, yes, that would be the point. The North isn’t all gun battles and derelict buildings. Even Merseyside isn’t all that. In so far as Esther McVey is standing in a constituency that is abnormal in no way other than geographically, this attractive, articulate candidate would be exactly the type of person the Conservatives should be pushing. But no, Cameron’s posturing just confirms that to his breed of Conservatives, the North is merely a backdrop for some suitably grim photo ops, with Northerners as victims or savages or anything but fellow citizens.

The North needs neither grand projects nor Metropolitan yuppie scum tourists taking out onions for it. What the North needs to prosper is what everywhere needs: functional law-enforcement, real property rights, low taxes, capital punishment for lawyers…You know, it occurs to me that for all that the government has done for the North over these past thirty years, what they’ve done to the North is far worse. Human rights, ecolunacy, discrimination legislation, health & safety and all the other obsessions of the idle rich taxgulpers down in our nation’s capital have done more damage to the North than any number of white elephant projects can make up for. Maybe we shouldn’t object to Cameron treating the North like the Cursed Earth, just as long as he’ll follow through on the logic of his own position. Let’s cut a deal, Cameron: when your PM, you’ll be free to stay down there, if only you’ll keep your stupid legislation there too.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

You may remember that last week the Great & Good were deeply concerned about political disengagement amongst the ordinaries. Baroness Helena Kennedy QC had chaired an inquiry into how why people were so cynical about the political classes. Staggeringly enough, the answer wasn’t that we’re governed by people who think that the best person to investigate the views of Joe Public is a media luvvey barrister and member of the House of Lords. Nope – apparently, what Britain needs is more Liberalism.

It was noticeable that there were more MPs actually sitting in the chamber forthis session than would normally be expected, particularly on a Monday when manyare still returning from their constituencies.Were they there to gloat,engage in a bit of car-crash-style rubber necking, or to support Ms Jowell?There may have been a bit of the first two, but from a large number of thoseon the Labour benches it was certainly a show of support for the beleagueredminister.Earlier in the day she had again been offered the prime minister'ssupport, and, as he answered the first question of the session, sports ministerDick Caborn also offered praise for his boss' work. …And Ms Jowell receivedmore vocal support from a number of her own backbenchers.

Hello ? Let’s just take the stuff Jowell’s admits: she approved a series of murky dealings, failed to declare interests and generally showed the alertness and intelligence of a table lamp. And for this she gets a hero’s welcome from the Left ?

At the risk of stating the obvious, Tessa Jowell isn’t in trouble because she bent the rules for a noble cause or took a stand on principle. The overwhelming characteristic of both her actions and her defence of them is sheer sleaziness. Maybe that isn’t a sacking offence, but it’s hardly something that should be celebrated. Her reception in the House was another classic Nu Labour Animal Farm moment.

Maybe I’m too idealistic, maybe this support for a sleazy incompetent is just party politics. OK, so what about the Yin to that Yang ? Where are the Tories ? Ah yes:

[Tory spokesman Hugo Swire] suggested that, in her difficult time, theminister must ensure it did not get in the way of the proper running of herdepartment.

This might just signal a hardening of the line from the Tories who havebeen careful not to weigh into this controversy just yet, preferring to watch asthe row unfolds through the media and elsewhere.

This is their new harder line ? A government minister has been accused of being involved in large-scale corruption and they’re hoping it doesn’t distract her from business ? And the Tories can’t even hold that line:

Tory MP Mark Lancaster also expressed his genuine pleasure that she was in herplace for question time.

Yes, opposition for opposition’s sake is stupid, but this insane. Plausible allegations of money laundering have been made and instead of holding the government to account, the Tories are going through the motions. Sure, they’d like to be in government one day: better offices, chauffer-driven cars, etc, but not to the extent of derailing the gravy train. C’mon! Have a sense of priorities here...

This is what’s really wrong with British politics. It’s not just Tessa Jowell that’s been exposed as sleazy, it’s the rest of them as well. Ask one of the Labour MPs who cheered Jowell, what they were actually cheering. Was it the lies ? The tactical separation ? The self-confessed incompetence ? Or was it simply an exercise in crude, boorish arrogance, a demonstration of utter contempt for any of the rules of normal behaviour ? Certainly, the Tories won’t object. No doubt, Her Majesty’s Opposition might stick their oar in future in if there is some overwhelming political advantage to be gained, but that’s kind of the point. Forget any other factors, Jowell's behaviour, in and of itself, is an outrage, irrespective of any wider political calculations.

The old joke has become true, Westminster really is Hollywood for the ugly. Just like Hollyweird, the place is a cesspit full of elitist morons completely divorced from real-life and unmoored from any sense of morality. That’s the answer right there. The public hasn’t become disengaged from politicians, politicians have become disengaged from the public. Why should any decent person give these sleazy low-lifes the time of day ?

Sunday, March 05, 2006

As I understand it, Tessa Jowell never questioned her husband on his Byzantine financial affairs because she was blinded by lurrrve but, after a week of negative media scrutiny, she’s dropping him like a Frenchman’s rifle. Is it just me or do other people sense a certain mixed message here ?

Not every Liberal got the memo though. While the MSM was busily telling us that it’s perfectly credible for a government minister to have absolutely no idea what’s going on in her own house, up on Murkeyside Liberals are experimenting with a whole new concept of familial responsibility.

Not to be flippant, but at least they only killed Anthony Walker once. Romeo & Juliet appear to have changed mortgagees like David Beckham changes hairstyle. More to the point, there's no evidence that the Barton family knew - let alone approved of – anything, far less that they benefited from these crimes, so that’s two things they’ve got over the star-crossed ones.

Equally, while it’s true that the Libs aren’t actually blowing the house up, in so far as a family will be made homeless, this seems essentially the self-same thing Liberals decry as ‘collective punishment’ when carried out by you-know-who.

Of course, there is a case for eviction where the crimes committed directly affect the quality of life of other tenants, but I think we can safely say that there is no threat from Michael Barton for the moment. Nope, this action is entirely punitive, Liberals aren’t trying to make the community a better place, they’re motivated by a medieval concept of vengeance.

This is the point I keep making. Liberals do love their little sermons about the evils of an excessively punitive justice system, but us evil Righties only wanted to execute Ian Huntley, not his parents. Every time a Liberal talks about the need for compassion, understanding or some other hippy garbage in the justice system, you can bet that we’re talking about something that Liberals don’t think should be a crime anyway. Have you heard a Liberal talk about the need to understand the root causes of tax evasion ? Mind you, one more week of revelations and they might start. Still, remember the compassionate Liberal response when Jeffery Archer got sent down ? Apparently, prison works, but only for Conservatives.

These people are telling us who they are. NACRO, the Howard Trust, Amnesia Intentional, Libelty and all the rest of the Liberal freak show have given the game away. Just like 90% of Liberal pressure groups, their positions are entirely fungible, changing with whatever best suits the Liberal agenda at the time. Kill a guy because you don’t like blacks ? Liberals will try and get your second cousin fired from his job. Kill a whole bunch of people because you hate Infidels ? Liberals will be treading on the bodies of the fallen in their rush to comfort your family.

So Liberals are a bunch of conniving scumbags. I know that will be a shock to many of you, but there you have it. I have a modest suggestion though. Let’s stop arguing on ground of their choosing. We've allowed them to set the terms of the debate and use the genuinely oppressed as some kind of human shield. When we talk about their agenda, we aren’t talking about human rights, morality or anything of the sort. These people are campaigning to advance the Liberal agenda and Conservatives should have no qualms about calling these people what they are.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Who says the police can’t deal with serious crimes ? Self-confessed ‘store owner’ Donald Reynolds thought he was safe to carry on his evil trade, right up until the moment officers from West Mercia Police’s elite Special Toy Squad raided his den, seizing toys with a street value of up to £60.

Note that this whole farce was supposedly started by ‘a' passer-by - this really is a perfect example of the Liberal conception of free speech. Liberals believe that the police should harass shopkeepers for no better reason than that one person has decided that they don’t like what they’ve got in their window, but a major political figure abusing a Jew with a series of Holocaust references is the epitome of free speech. Then again, the Filth aren’t always as quick to act. You do wonder what would have happened if the golliwogs had been holding placards calling for the murder of Infidels.

The bit I can’t work out is why they needed to take the toys to decide if an offence had been committed. What were they doing, interviewing them ? Did they have a lawyer present ? Or is it, to take a wild shot in the dark, that they realised even our courts would throw the case out in approximately 3 seconds flat, so they settled for some legal harassment instead (where’s Liberty when we need them ?).

Having given up on trying to find a judge daft enough to believe that a cuddly toy could be said to be ‘threatening, abusive or insulting’, the Filth will apparently be advising Mr Reynolds on the ‘sensitivities of displaying them’. Yes, indeed. No more displaying his wares in the window. How about putting them on the roof ? Or in the basement ? Or how about my idea – put a uniform on one and make it Chief Constable. The quality of service can only improve.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Great comment to this post over at Biased BBC. Here's Susan on the BBC's whiny hand-wringing about anyone telling the truth about Islam.

"Is it responsible for them to make a statement like this in the current climate?"

Was it "responsible" for the barons to write the Magna Carta? Was it "responsible" for Luther to nail his theses to the cathedral door? Was it "responsible" for Parliament to put Charles I on trial? Was it "responsible" for the American colonists to sign the Declaration of Independence? Was it "responsible" for Martin Luther King to give his "I Have a Dream" speech?

This is what we Westerners DO, ya dumb*ss Beeboids. And if you'd bothered studying our history, our traditions and our culture in college instead of sniffing glue and whacking off over old copies of Das Kapital, you wouldn't be so horrified that we haven't **quite** forgotten who we are -- yea, even after decades of Gramscian brainwashing put out by the likes of you tried to make us forget all about it.

This is the revenge of the hated Dead White Males on your stupid malignant Gramscian *sses and the beauty of it is, many of those people paying tribute to the **horrible** values of the **horrible** West by signing that manifesto aren't white!

In order to pursue his campaign against unelected activists impeding the business of government, Ken Livingstone has gone to court to block his suspension. Don’t forget to vote in the election for Lord Chancellor!

Nevertheless, today’s exercise in humbuggery is but a mere molehill compared to the slag heaps of it which have emerged from the Left since Livingstone had his misfortune. As Mark rightly points out, it was people like Livingstone who lit the flame at the Victimhood Olympics in the first place. More to the point, the rules surrounding grievance mining were deliberately drawn up to maximise the likelihood of such complaints. That’s why, for example, it’s completely bogus for Liberals to claim Livingstone shouldn’t have been suspended because what he said wasn’t actually that offensive. The rules they drew up say that if anything – anything! – is considered racist by anybody, then it is indeed racist.

For those still convinced that Livingstone is the victim of some dark conspiracy, consider recent events in Manchester. No mere standards board here. I guess we’re finding out why Manchester has such a problem with high-velocity lead pollution – all the cops are busy investigating complaints from psychics who saw Ken Dodd, Paul McCartney and Cherie Blair make an obscene gesture at Frank Bruno. Hey – at least it was the guy himself who complained in the Livingstone case, not some blokes two hundred miles away. So where are all the Liberal opponents of this sort of thing ? I guess Steve Finnan needs to start having Islamofascists to lunch.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Apparently, Tessa Jowell is starring in a new show on BBC2 – Pay Off Your Mortgage In Two Weeks. Of course, the actual details of Tessa’s Italian Job are ‘very complex’. When Liberals say something is ‘very complex’ but won’t provide the details, that usually means they’re up to no good.

Doubtless, the ins and outs of the wheeling and dealing are complex, but the key facts are hardly rocket science. Tessa’s significant other raised a mortgage on the house to release £350K, supposedly to fund an investment in an offshore hedge fund, then paid it off days later. As joint owner, Tessa Jowell would have had to sign the paperwork for the mortgage, would have had an interest in half the investment (which she failed to declare it), and would have had an interest in the money used to pay off her mortgage (ditto). Complex, n’est pas ?

Seriously, who doesn’t mortgage their house to invest in high-risk offshore investments ? Did she do anything illegal ? Wrong question – we’re not talking about whether she should be in jail, we’re talking about whether she should be in a highly-sensitive job, all the more so in an administration that was supposed to be whiter than white. Leave aside moral questions – if she’ll sign away her own house at the drop of a hat, what’s she like with other people’s money ?

But that’s all by the by, the best thing about all this has been seeing yet another femihag try to pass herself as Daphne from Scooby Doo. Ooooh money, I don’t handle money, I just let my husband sort it all out. Her Royal Cherieness claiming to be just an ordinary housewife and mother was funny enough, but now Little Miss Gender Segregation herself claims she signed away her house with no idea where the money was going just because her husband told her to ? How can the satire industry survive when faced with this kind of unfair competition ?

The Leftards are yammering again. They’re whining about banks exploting poor people by pressuring them to buy complex financial products that they don’t need.

No, wait. That was last month. Now it’s the other way round: banks not offering enough financial services to the poor.

Even Leftists realise that criticising people for refusing to sell products to people who can’t afford them might be a tough sale, as it were. Hence, Plan B: yammer on about feelings of ‘abandonment’ and other Therapy Nation garbage.

What’s the answer ? What do these freaks suggest ? Ah, yes, nada. Of course. They’re Liberals, did you really expect them to advocate a coherent policy ? They can’t admit the truth – that they just hate the financial services industry. No matter how badly the insurance companies screw up, people aren’t yet ready for the idea that John Prescott could do a better job. Instead, Liberals try to prepare the ground for more government intervention by seizing on just about any trend to explain why the free market is bad. Banks selling too much to the poor ? Evil. Selling too little ? Still evil. The only consistent theme is this: the market’s full of big, scary monsters, so give all your money to nanny, and she’ll look after it for you. So now the inner cities will have banks that work as well as the local schools ? You think the queues are bad now, just wait to the brains behind the NHS get a grip on the industry. Mind you, I wouldn't mind one of them Tessa Jowell mortgages...